Each time we hear news reports of the world going crazy, our minds always go to the usual suspects in Africa, Middle East and South East Asia. Not this time guys. It seems like the entire world has been dancing drunk to Faze’s song ‘Go gaga going crazy! Look round the world, Zika virus and an economic meltdown in Brazil, economic collapse and political turmoil in Venezuela, terror in France and Belgium, Donald Trump in America (Trump is a crisis mind you!), ISIS in the Middle East, Boko Haram and Niger Delta Avengers in Nigeria and of course Brexit. It wasn’t too long ago that the world was screaming about globalization, but just as was predicted comically some years back by Etienne T Boy in his ‘chop I chop’ song, (where the hell is he?), the world is getting tired of globalization and we are now clamoring for a return to the village where ‘Even though na yam, even though na cassava, me I go chop you go chop, nobody will chop alone’.

As we battle to comprehend the reasons for the Brexit vote and the emergence of Donald Trump, the world must come to terms with the crisis facing us. I have for long held the opinion that the challenges which precipitated political and religious crisis globally were borne out of economic inequality. Look around the world and check the gap between the rich and the poor. Look at corporations and compare the wages of the highest and lowest earners. Sometimes it seems like the rich and the poor live in different worlds. Not the Lone world created by God but a world divided by the greed and primitive acquisition of wealth by the rich to the detriment of the less economically endowed.  Perhaps if the wealthy nations and businesses show more care about those not so well endowed, we would have less people who would willing sacrifice their lives for religion or embark on rebellious uprisings. Perhaps too, a happier world would have fewer angry people because anger is the progenitor of hatred.

I was introduced to Christian Felber’s ‘Economy for Common Good’ (ECG) model a couple of months ago. Initially I was reluctant to ‘waste’ my time reading another economic theory. What was the point anyway? It wasn’t like I was going back to school to study for a professional degree. Reluctantly I took time to read his writings and watched the ECG educational videos. It was like ‘Eureka’ when it hit me. The ECG model appears to me like an immediate recipe for the disasters facing us. It is fresh, exciting and realizable, if only business and political leaders look beyond the selfish gains of today.

The introductory article below was sent to adeadeogun.com by my friend Ilaria Chessa who is an earlier convert and volunteer for the ECG cause. It makes a very educative reading.

An Essay to Introduce the Economy for The Common Good to Nigeria
by Ilaria Chessa

1. The global context: economic crisis, widening inequality and civil unrest

In 2008 economists had predicted a temporary economic crisis. Today we know that there is nothing short-term about the economic slowdown. Our socio-economic system based on unlimited wealth accumulation has worked, and continue to do so, fantastically well for just a few, while hurting the large majority of citizens with poverty, widening inequality and little to no effective democratic participation. Crises are opportunities for change when we can see clearly what we got wrong. One area that we mixed up is the inversion of the goals and means of the democratic capitalist system. At the heart of every democratic Constitution is the goal of the common good of all citizens, and private enterprise is stated to serve such objective. Yet, to measure the health of our nations we take indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the macroeconomic level, and business financial returns at the micro level. Both indicators say nothing about how healthy, secure, happy, fair and ecologically sustainable a society is or how much a firm contributes to that. Also, GDP does not capture the distribution of growth across the population so it says nothing about economic inequality; it is therefore an inadequate indicator of the common good derived by the production of goods and services in any given society. Focusing on the wrong indicators made us overlook the gravity of income and wealth inequality, which has become the defining challenge of our times. The gap between the rich and poor is at its highest level in decades. Inequality in wealth distribution hinders the basic survival for billions of people and is a threat to democracy; it limits political freedom and access to power, with billionaires buying political votes and prominent public positions. Income and wealth inequality is compounded by corruption and the siphoning out of public coffers of huge sums of money from less scrutinized economies, resources that are then deposited into the financial systems of hypocritical nations making the fortune of their bankers, investment brokers and real estate tycoons. In this setting it is no surprise that since the world crisis started we have witnessed mass protests across the globe; from Venezuela’s economic crisis, marked by rampant inflation, chronic shortages of subsidized goods, and food riots; to the suspension from office for President Rousseff of Brazil pending an impeachment trial over accusations of corruption in manipulating public accounts; and on the other side of the Atlantic, Greece’s unsustainable debt crisis which led to the collapse of the economy and to civic unrest.

Nigeria is familiar with the mechanism of wealth accumulation through power; corruption made a few Nigerians phenomenally rich at the expense of millions. And a year after the start of the 5^th democratic dispensation under the leadership of President Buhari, people’s hopes for better living standards remain unmet. Some argue that corruption has declined but so has public sector procurement. At the current oil price, the country’s public coffers are nearly empty in the face of a huge recurrent bill for a bloated public sector, a large infrastructure gap to bridge, an unaffordable public debt service to revenue ratio, a depreciating currency that increases the cost of living and a fragmented and mostly informal non-oil economy.

As Albert Einstein put it, men cannot resolve problems with the same mind-set that produced them. Our political representatives, just like our socio-economic problems, are children of the same eroded value system. To become part of the solution and re-shape values and goals, we must first recognise that we are part of the problem, as silent or as active stakeholders, as investors, producers, consumers, parents, educators and policy makers. Looking at the bright side, the good news is that the alternative to the current system already exists: the economy for the common good (ECG)

2. The Economy for the Common Good: a socio-economic model and a world movement

What is the Economy for the Common Good?

The Economy for the Common Good (ECG) is an alternative socio-economic model to the dominant one applied today that failed to deliver wellbeing, security and equal opportunities for all. The ECG was formalized in 2010 with the publication of ‘Change Everything: The Economy for the Common Good’ by Christian Felber. Pointing the attention to the inversion of goals and means of our mainstream socio-economic model, the EBC repositions the common good at the centre of public and private initiative, aligning it to the central goal of all democratic Constitutions. In place of the business financial returns and GDP, the ECG proposes the common good balance sheet and the Gross Common Good Product.

The current economic system does not fulfil the goal of freedom by allowing unlimited wealth inequality, wealth and power concentration and consequent loss of freedom. To resolve this, the ECG proposes limited wealth and business accumulation, hence positioning itself as an economic model that limits wealth inequality, a compromise between the current capitalist paradigm of unlimited inequality and communism with equality but loss of private incentive. Private wealth must be limited and the gap between the top and bottom earners in a firm must not exceed the factor of 10, based on a survey of 50,000 people across 50 countries. In the ECG vision, the market is liberal in a true sense; all stakeholders benefit from the same liberties, rights and opportunities, which is not the case today; and all market players align their behaviour with the constitutional values and be truly ethical, democratic, humane and collaborative, and serve the society with their goods and services. The ECG proposes to invert the current relation between price and ethical value in the marketplace so that ethical goods and services become more economical through public incentives, like less taxes, free trade flows and preference in public procurement to companies that deliver proven positive value for the common good (as measured by the common good matrix). This in turn will demonstrate the alignment of the market and public institutions with the core values of the Constitutions. On one hand, current laws do not reward honesty, generosity and solidarity so ethical businesses are less price-competitive and penalised. On the other hand, our socio-economic structures influence our mind-set. Consequently, once our structures – reflected in the formal educational system and the market regulations – are made to reward sharing, moderation, modesty and ecological sustainability, people’s mind-set shall reflect the same values. It is time we re-write the rules of the capitalist game!

Operational Instruments: the Common Good Matrix

The ECG developed a practical instrument to guide firms and government stakeholders to assess and orient their actions towards the common good: the common good matrix. To date the matrix has been used by over 2000 companies across the world in preparing non-financial sustainability reports through the application of 17 indicators and 52 sub-criteria. The process entails a self analysis (which is subsequently audited) of corporate internal and external decision-making processes with respect to a variety of stakeholders (namely, suppliers, financiers, personnel/managers, clients/partner/companies/competitors and the local community/environment/future generations) and based on the values of human dignity and social justice, cooperation and solidarity, ecological sustainability and democratic participation and transparency. Companies are awarded a score between 0 and 1000 based on their performance. In each of the 17 indicators a ‘traffic light’ (green, orange and red) is placed on the report to guide consumers to make spending decisions based on their ethical values and priorities. Companies can also be awarded negative points up to 1500, for exampled if they contribute to human rights violations, finance wars and trade arms.

A version of the ECG matrix was adapted for municipalities and has been applied by some tens of local governments in Europe with the aim to re-centre their contribution to a more human and ecologically sustainable world.

The ECG as a World Movement

The ECG is also a world movement whose goal is to disseminate the ECG model and the application of its instruments to refocus private and public initiative on the goal of the common good. Started in 2010 by 12 Austrian pioneer companies that had the desire to act ethically without losing competitiveness, in just five years, the movement counts:

• 10,000 active members in over 30 countries
• 2,100 companies adhering to the common good values of which 350 published audited non-financial report including a few public enterprises, like hospitals and schools
• 100 universities collaborate with ECG in research projects; the University of Vienna (Austria) and Valencia (Spain) instituted a faculty of Economics for the Common Good and a UNESCO faculty for the common good is under approval in Spain.

At the institutional level, the ECG collaborates with municipalities, national and international parliaments and political parties that are open to the ECG content. The movement is active in Europe but sparks are lighting up all over the world including in Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, and the United States of America.

It is often the case that change sparks from small realities. For example, the tiny South Asian state of Bhutan created the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index in place of GDP to measure national wellbeing. Likewise, the ECG registered successes from the micro-level up:

• First phase (Municipalities): A few municipalities of Spain and northern Italy created the Gross Common Good Product, together with businesses, schools and families.
• Second phase (Regions): In December 2014, the regional parliament of Bolzen in northern Italy passed a law that states that only companies with positive common good impact (measured by the ECG matrix) will be granted access to public procurement.
• Third phase (Europe): In September 2015, the European Economic and Social Committee (CESE), a 350-member consultative body of the European Union has voted with 86% in favour of the Economy for the Common Good as a truly sustainable and viable economic model

ECG and Citizens Democracy

The ECG has a political ‘sister’, the citizens’ democracy based on the principle of people’s sovereignty, meaning that people’s will is above (super) all (anus). In the past two decades, indirect democracy through party systems systematically failed to effectively translate people’s will into laws, progressively shifting the emphasis of power from the people to the governments. Citizens’ democracy calls for the reform of Constitutions across the world to coin a concept of democracy that reclaims the sovereignty of people to the point that Constitutions themselves should not be drafted and voted by governments but by the citizens; the parliament then makes laws that reflect the goals and principles defined by the sovereign people. Once applied this would avoid situations like Iceland in 2013 when people overthrew their government and rewrote and voted a new Constitution after a banking fraud led to the country’s financial crisis, but the new constitution ended up not being adopted because the old one foresaw changes to be voted by the Parliament and not the people. We must change our laws, even our constitutions, when they intrinsically contradict people’s will and true values.

Is the Economy for the Common Good Utopia?

Utopia points at where we are yet to arrive as human beings. The utopia of today is the reality of tomorrow. Sharing today a clear vision of where we can be tomorrow, more and more people can unite and visualize a new tomorrow and contribute to make it a reality.

Nigeria: Get Involved!

The Economy for the Common Good invites all Nigerians to join and support the ECG movement in many ways:

• Sign up and become a member https://www.ecogood.org/en/get-involved
• Set up an ECG local chapter in your community/city/state and disseminate its narrative and values
• Promote presentations on the ECG at conferences / seminars and invite us as speakers to share the experience of the movement worldwide (in government, universities, student unions, business fora and chambers of commerce) or we are happy to support you with material to make your presentations
• Undertake and disseminate research about the benefits for businesses and municipalities to adopt the Economy for the Common Good model
• Apply the ECG matrix in your company or municipality